STOCKBROKER SENTENCED TO 15 YEARS

A federal judge exceeded a prosecutor's recommendation on Monday and sentenced Boca Raton whiz-kid stockbroker Leslie Roberts to the maximum 15 years in prison for fraud involving his uncle's multimillion-dollar portfolio.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Karadbil asked for prison time on only two of three counts of mail fraud and conspiracy, which would have drawn a maximum of 10 years.

Roberts, who pleaded guilty to the charges Feb. 3, made an impassioned, rambling plea for leniency.

"I'll never be in trouble again," he said. "My word is gold."

Defense attorney Robert Hertzberg asked U.S. District Judge James Paine for a 24- to 30-month sentence.

"I would hope this court would not lump my client with the Ivan Boeskys and the Dennis Levines of the world," he said, referring to the major players in the Wall Street insider trading scandal that has rocked the financial world.

"The government is not contending he was Ivan Boesky or Dennis Levine or of that ilk," Karadbil countered.

Nevertheless, citing the amount of money Roberts stole during his 21-month tenure with the E.F. Hutton and Merrill Lynch brokerage firms, Paine meted out the stiffest possible sentence.

"It's a very serious matter," the judge said.

Paine said he took into account Roberts' clean record, his young age of 24, and traumatic psychological factors that might partially explain the broker's actions, an apparent reference to the murder of Roberts' drug-addicted father by Roberts' mother when he was 13.

Roberts, a former movie house usher and University of Miami dropout, largely acted alone or with the help of his half-brother in manipulating hundreds of trades on the portfolio of his uncle, businessman Frank Gory of Hallandale.

The half-brother, Jeffrey Lee Roberts, 27, stood beside Leslie Roberts at Monday's hearing in West Palm Beach. Jeffrey Roberts was sentenced to three years in prison for his plea to one count of mail fraud.

By Karadbil's estimate, Gory lost between $5 million and $50 million depending on how Roberts' scheme and the accounts are interpreted, the difference being what Gory thought he had earned and what he actually lost.

The scheme started when Roberts lost $44,000 on a trade for his uncle's account at Hutton, then decided to cover up the loss in the hope of regaining the money, Hertzberg said.

"All of a sudden, he found himself on a merry-go-round, not knowing how to stop it, and became a criminal," Hertzberg said.

Roberts soon was sending Gory counterfeit confirmation slips and monthly account statements that reflected phony, profitable trades that Roberts wanted Gory to believe were being made for him.

The real trading slips, which reflected losses, were routed to the Hialeah home of Roberts' in-laws, where they were intercepted by Roberts.

Gory thought Roberts had boosted his accounts into the "neighborhood of $55 million," Gory's lawyer, Ron Barron, said outside court. Gory has lawsuits pending against Merrill Lynch and E.F. Hutton.

By the time FBI agents arrested Roberts on Feb. 14, 1986, the accounts contained some $8 million, considerably less than the estimated $17 million to $18 million Roberts appears to have started with.

While at Hutton's North Miami Beach office between May 1984 and November 1985, Roberts became the firm's top broker in the world, earning $3.5 million in commissions made from transactions on Gory's accounts, according to affidavits filed in the case.

A Boca Raton branch of Merrill Lynch lured Roberts away with a $100,000 bonus and jobs for half-brother Jeffrey Roberts, a stepbrother and a secretary, records show.

In the three months up until his arrest in February 1986, Roberts earned another $1.4 million, records show.

With his earnings, Roberts leased a Lear jet and bought a fleet of cars and a $1.5 million house in the Le Lac development west of Boca Raton.